Lakeland Electric expects to have all power restored except in 2,000 hard cases

Christopher Guinn @cguinnnews

Friday

Sep 15, 2017 at 10:37 PMSep 15, 2017 at 10:37 PM

Lakeland Electric has requested 20 additional line crews to handle what the city is calling "the 2,000" customers it expects not to have power after Sunday, General Manager Joel Ivy told city commissioners Friday.

LAKELAND — Lakeland Electric has requested 20 additional line crews to handle what the city is calling "the 2,000" customers it expects not to have power after Sunday, General Manager Joel Ivy told city commissioners Friday.

Before it enlisted the help of the additional crews, Ivy said, utility officials had expected it to take four to five days beyond Sunday to get everyone's power back online.

"With those 20 extra crews, hopefully, we can cut that in half," he said.

On Monday morning, about 78,000 of the utility's approximately 125,000 customers had lost power because of Hurricane Irma.

The number of customers without power was down to below 10,000 by Friday morning.

The utility expects to have all but those 2,000 remaining hard cases to be completed by Sunday. In the remaining cases, equipment or lines need to be substantially rebuilt.

The utility has also assigned crews to begin working on the "ones and twos," homes within electrified neighborhoods that did not come back online because of localized equipment failure from storm damage.

Polk City's transmission line, which sustained significant damage in the storm, should be rectified by today morning, Ivy said.

He said the utility, its linemen and the outside crews assisting will continue working double-time until the utility can find no practical use for them.

"We're going to throw as many bodies at these things as we can and should," Ivy said.

Ivy also addressed accusations of discrimination, that the utility favored groups or parts of the city for quick power restoration.

"The last 2,000 are in the city, so it's not a city or county thing," Ivy said, "and it's not by the color of your skin or anything else, it's about how hard it is going to be to get done."

Commissioners questioned Ivy about how much of the mass outage was preventable.

Lakeland Electric was behind in its program to replace and storm harden power poles — replacing old poles, or swapping wood for harder materials, Ivy responded. There was a plan in the works to expedite that process.

"We were at the point to pull the trigger and the hurricane hit," he said. "If you have an exposure, mother nature is going to help you recognize it."

Commissioner Edie Yates criticized the city's communication about power restoration efforts, saying the city too often focused on the negative.

Early Thursday, the city released information saying, if power wasn't restored by the end of the day, it could take a week for the remaining customers.

The city's communications staff quickly changed to a more nuanced message that indicated the same thing: much of the easier work was done and the harder cases will take more time.

Yates compared it to messaging from Duke Energy and Tampa Electric, which have committed to having power restored by Sunday. Tampa Electric has hedged that statement somewhat, saying difficult cases could take longer.

Troller: Time to reassess curfew

With power substantially restored by Monday morning, Commissioner Justin Troller suggested it may then be time for Lakeland to remove the midnight curfew applied county-wide by Sheriff Grady Judd earlier this week.

"On Monday, I'm going to review where we are and I think that's something we need to reconsider," Troller said.

The commission has a regularly scheduled meeting at 9 a.m. Monday at City Hall, 228 S. Massachusetts Ave.

Troller said Lakeland has invested significant time and expense in preparing for hurricane damage and the commission should be willing to lift the curfew despite what the rest of the county is doing. Polk County lifted its curfew on Friday.

"We can't just continue to have the curfew because it's right for their communities, I think we need to do what's right for our community," Troller said.

Commissioner Phillip Walker said he continues to support the curfew and would want "assurance" that it will not allow a "criminal element" to run amok.

Commissioner Don Selvage also urged caution: "I think we need to be in tune with what (Polk County) Sheriff (Grady) Judd is trying to accomplish countywide."

City Manager Tony Delgado said the curfew was a useful tool for preventing crime and said officers have been using their discretion wisely in enforcing it.

Code enforcement will remain lax

Celeste Deardorff, the deputy community development manager, said city workers from multiple departments have been assessing damage throughout the city, including code enforcement officials.

Enforcement of building codes will remain lax as the city rebuilds, she said. If code enforcement officers are out taking pictures, it's most likely to help complete reports required to receive assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"For the most part, they've been told to relax while people are given time to clean up," Delgado said.

City employees counted about 2,700 damaged structures in Lakeland, many of them mobile homes. Compared to the hurricanes in 2004, there was far less mayhem.

"We had so many blue roofs," she said, referring to the sea of tarps on roofs across the county in 2004. "We've seen so few of those."

Troller argued the city should define the scope of this lax period but received no support from the rest of the commission or the city staff.

Deardorff and Delgado also said the city will be implementing a looser building permit process to help residents get repairs done with fewer headaches.

Irma was unique in that it caused problems throughout the state, Delgado told commissioners, which meant outside organizations' responses were diluted or triaged to harder hit areas.

"That's part of the discussion here that has to be understood because it hit so much of the state of Florida ... in 2004 we were able to obtain assistance from around the state. (For Irma) for the most part, we were on our own."

Christopher Guinn can be reached at Christopher.Guinn@theledger.com or 863-802-7592. Follow him on Twitter @CGuinnNews.

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